[εις επαινον δοξης αυτου] New comment on Lived Sense, a Part of Rational Experience.
jeff has left a new comment on your post "Lived Sense, a Part of Rational Experience":
Hi,
some thoughts. Thanks to the lovely nature of online discussions, I think it's to the point where I have to blockquote!
she is talking about a complicated skill ... which incorporates ... things hard-to-express-in-words like: does he shift his weight, does he look me in the eye.
I think you just expressed those in words. I think that these sorts of instincts are really just rational faculties so ingrained that we don't think about them on a higher level. It doesn't make them magical in any way; rather, this "gut" distrust of the shady mechanic is perhaps more like appetite - we don't think, "gee, I haven't eaten in x hours so I should eat", we just feel hungry.
Saying no to the question, by the way, requires as much work to be shown as yes.
This is a common sentiment among theologians and believers in general, and I think that it's a very striking logical fallacy. The burden of proof is on the person who introduces the idea; it doesn't get to be true by default.
Imagine I tell you there's a magical blue teapot orbiting Jupiter, and if you pray to it, it will listen and help you out. I would hope that you would not say, "well, I can't prove him wrong, so I guess it is likely to be true." I would hope you would say, "there is no evidence to back that claim, so I find it very unlikely."
this epistemic act of knowing God now compares more to, say, Jeff's mom telling me that he has gone to Europe for a visit, but that he promised to fix my car when he gets back."
I think this is clever rhetorically but she still doesn't bridge the gap here between material and immaterial. She's dealing with real people. If Jeff's mom instead told her about my teapot, I would hope her reaction would not be, "well, I guess I can't touch the teapot myself, but Jeff (as in me) says he went out there on a spaceship and touched it, that's good enough for me!"
I think Meek's point is that most knowledge for "ordinary" people is not arrived at by well developed "rational argument".
I read this as her saying that most decisions are not arrived by rational argument, which may very well be true. But I don't think this is a free "out" from the rigors of academic thinking.
Everyone has epistemic questions which cannot be answered by "materialistic means."
I'm ok with this - this is philosophy. But if you claim to have an answer to a question that can't be answered by empirical evidence or logical thinking, then you're selling snake-oil. "Faith" is a cop-out, to me.
For instance, you are studying (from my recollection) the first epoch of the big bang. I would argue the question of origin is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one.
Well, saying "what happened before the big bang" is a non-nonsensical question, scientifically speaking - so I agree that THAT question is not of scientific origin; we're studying the early history of the universe, which is observable.
it's interpretation of them is not repeatable, thus not verifiable, strictly speaking.
There are good and bad interpretations of facts. We operate on this every day; it's why when we arrive home and our window is broken we call the cops - because a rational interpretation of this fact is that someone broke in and might be waiting in there for us with a baseball bat. Not all interpretations of the facts are created equally; logical positivism is valid because it is functional, it has succeeded in teaching us about the universe and eventually closes in on the right answers. If people had terrible interpretations of the facts (eg, Newton's apple tells him that invisible monkeys make things fall by throwing them at the ground, rather than that massive bodies attract each other with a force that's proportional to the inverse of their distance squared), science would be divergent and incoherent - the fact that it begins to form a structure tells us our interpretations aren't always correct at first, but begin to be correct as we learn more.
I think towards the end of that paragraph, you begin to enter territory where my knowledge of theology puts me out of the picture ;)
why I believe Christianity and why you believe in naturalism.
Ah, well, by virtue of using a computer, you also believe in - or I would say accept - naturalism!
Respectfully,
Jeff
Posted by jeff to εις επαινον δοξης αυτου at 10:51 AM
Hi,
some thoughts. Thanks to the lovely nature of online discussions, I think it's to the point where I have to blockquote!
she is talking about a complicated skill ... which incorporates ... things hard-to-express-in-words like: does he shift his weight, does he look me in the eye.
I think you just expressed those in words. I think that these sorts of instincts are really just rational faculties so ingrained that we don't think about them on a higher level. It doesn't make them magical in any way; rather, this "gut" distrust of the shady mechanic is perhaps more like appetite - we don't think, "gee, I haven't eaten in x hours so I should eat", we just feel hungry.
Saying no to the question, by the way, requires as much work to be shown as yes.
This is a common sentiment among theologians and believers in general, and I think that it's a very striking logical fallacy. The burden of proof is on the person who introduces the idea; it doesn't get to be true by default.
Imagine I tell you there's a magical blue teapot orbiting Jupiter, and if you pray to it, it will listen and help you out. I would hope that you would not say, "well, I can't prove him wrong, so I guess it is likely to be true." I would hope you would say, "there is no evidence to back that claim, so I find it very unlikely."
this epistemic act of knowing God now compares more to, say, Jeff's mom telling me that he has gone to Europe for a visit, but that he promised to fix my car when he gets back."
I think this is clever rhetorically but she still doesn't bridge the gap here between material and immaterial. She's dealing with real people. If Jeff's mom instead told her about my teapot, I would hope her reaction would not be, "well, I guess I can't touch the teapot myself, but Jeff (as in me) says he went out there on a spaceship and touched it, that's good enough for me!"
I think Meek's point is that most knowledge for "ordinary" people is not arrived at by well developed "rational argument".
I read this as her saying that most decisions are not arrived by rational argument, which may very well be true. But I don't think this is a free "out" from the rigors of academic thinking.
Everyone has epistemic questions which cannot be answered by "materialistic means."
I'm ok with this - this is philosophy. But if you claim to have an answer to a question that can't be answered by empirical evidence or logical thinking, then you're selling snake-oil. "Faith" is a cop-out, to me.
For instance, you are studying (from my recollection) the first epoch of the big bang. I would argue the question of origin is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one.
Well, saying "what happened before the big bang" is a non-nonsensical question, scientifically speaking - so I agree that THAT question is not of scientific origin; we're studying the early history of the universe, which is observable.
it's interpretation of them is not repeatable, thus not verifiable, strictly speaking.
There are good and bad interpretations of facts. We operate on this every day; it's why when we arrive home and our window is broken we call the cops - because a rational interpretation of this fact is that someone broke in and might be waiting in there for us with a baseball bat. Not all interpretations of the facts are created equally; logical positivism is valid because it is functional, it has succeeded in teaching us about the universe and eventually closes in on the right answers. If people had terrible interpretations of the facts (eg, Newton's apple tells him that invisible monkeys make things fall by throwing them at the ground, rather than that massive bodies attract each other with a force that's proportional to the inverse of their distance squared), science would be divergent and incoherent - the fact that it begins to form a structure tells us our interpretations aren't always correct at first, but begin to be correct as we learn more.
I think towards the end of that paragraph, you begin to enter territory where my knowledge of theology puts me out of the picture ;)
why I believe Christianity and why you believe in naturalism.
Ah, well, by virtue of using a computer, you also believe in - or I would say accept - naturalism!
Respectfully,
Jeff
Posted by jeff to εις επαινον δοξης αυτου at 10:51 AM
posted by Matthew LaPine at
10:51 AM
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